Amid Evil

Lore & Background

In the ancient past, a mysterious and powerful 'Evil Force' appeared and corrupted the sacred lands of the known realms. Though many heroes have tried to defeat the Evil Force, none have succeeded. The protagonist, known only as 'the Champion', is the first to overcome the trial of the Black Labyrinth and win the right to carry a holy battle axe. Possessing the powerful relic grants the wielder passage to the higher planes. As the Champion travels to an inter-dimensional gateway, the voices of ancient deities warn of the great power of the Evil Force and implore the Champion to cleanse the sacred lands.

Gameplay borrows heavily from 90s first-person shooters such as Unreal, Doom, Heretic, Hexen, and Quake. Levels are grouped into episodes, each with a unique theme, and players start in a hub level that allows episode and difficulty selection by walking through portals. The player battles enemies using an array of magical weapons, including the Axe of the Black Labyrinth and six ranged weapons that use four types of mana. Accumulating souls from fallen enemies activates 'soul mode,' granting alternative fire modes and increased power. Health is restored by picking up 'blood orbs,' and rare power-ups grant temporary abilities like flight, invisibility, or a torch.

Developers Leon Zawada and Simon Rance, friends since childhood, began their career with Doom mods and started Amid Evil as a Doom mod in 1997. Though that version was never completed, concepts evolved over time. The game's distinctive visual style uses normal mapped sprites for weapons and pickups, combined with low-resolution textures and normal maps for environments, described as a mix of old-school and new-school graphics techniques. Enemy AI is more dynamic than typical 1990s shooters, with enemies able to rush, jump, dodge, reflect attacks, and flank.

Reader's Guide

Amid Evil is notable as a modern revival of the dark fantasy first-person shooter subgenre, explicitly positioned as a spiritual successor to Heretic and Hexen. Its development history traces back to a 1997 Doom mod by childhood friends Leon Zawada and Simon Rance, who later worked together on the 2013 Rise of the Triad remake before forming Indefatigable. The game's unique visual style—using normal mapped sprites baked from hi-poly 3D meshes alongside low-resolution textures—was pioneered in an Unreal Engine 4 demo by Rance, which he described as 'the thing that got [the game] going.'

The game was released via Steam Early Access on March 12, 2018, with three of seven episodes, and additional episodes were released in a regular cadence until the full release on June 20, 2019. The early access release received press coverage focused on first impressions, with PC Gamer UK calling it 'A truly weird (and beautiful) fantasy setting lays the groundwork for a worthy ode to Heretic.' The full release received 'generally favorable' reviews on Metacritic, with reviewers praising the variety of weapons and environments and comparing the game favorably to Unreal and Quake. A prequel expansion, Amid Evil: The Black Labyrinth, was announced on September 6, 2020. The first DLC, Ancient Alpha Builds, offered five earlier versions of the game from various stages of development.

From Modding Roots to a Studio Debut

Long before Amid Evil existed as a standalone title, its DNA was already taking shape in the modding community. Leon Zawada and Simon Rance, childhood friends, first cut their teeth creating Doom modifications, most notably a Rise of the Triad total conversion called Return of the Triad. In 1997, the pair began Amid Evil as a Doom mod, a project that would never see completion. Yet the foundational ideas they explored during that early experiment—particularly their shared desire to build a 'fantasy shooter' combining medieval magical themes with ranged weaponry—survived and evolved over more than two decades. Their paths crossed again during the 2013 Rise of the Triad remake, where they connected with fellow developers who would eventually co-found the studio Indefatigable. Amid Evil became that new company's debut project, published by New Blood Interactive, carrying forward a vision the two friends had been nurturing since the late nineties.

A Rendering Pipeline That Bridges Eras

The visual identity of Amid Evil traces back to a single technical experiment. Before full development began, Simon Rance built an Unreal Engine 4 demo in which a weapon was rendered as a sprite carrying a normal map. He later called that small prototype the spark that set the entire project in motion. From that seed grew a rendering pipeline the developers describe as blending old-school and new-school techniques. In practice, first-person weapons and pickups are constructed as animated sprites with individual frames, each using masked materials that include normal, roughness, and metalness maps. These sprites are then baked with perspective derived from high-polygon 3D meshes—a workflow the team notes is unique to Amid Evil. Rance extended the same philosophy to environment textures: rather than painting large, detailed surfaces, the team would use a small-resolution texture paired with a normal map so that shading reads correctly while preserving the pixelated aesthetic of mid-nineties shooters. The result, in Rance's words, looks old but is carried into the future rather than merely imitated.

Combat, Exploration, and the Soul System

Amid Evil positions itself squarely in the lineage of Heretic and Hexen, and the design choices reinforce that heritage at every turn. The campaign unfolds across seven themed episodes, each containing four levels that culminate in a boss encounter, all accessible from a central hub area reminiscent of Quake's level-select portals. Within each level, non-linear paths, hidden secrets, and wall inscriptions reward exploration, while keys gate progression through locked doors. Combat draws on a distinctly magical arsenal: alongside the signature Axe of the Black Labyrinth, players collect six ranged weapons, each consuming one of four mana types that must be scavenged from the environment. Weapon effectiveness varies by enemy type, pushing players to adapt their loadout on the fly. A unique 'soul mode' triggers when enough enemy souls are absorbed, unlocking alternate fire modes and a burst of power. Enemy AI goes beyond static positioning—creatures rush, leap, flank, dodge, and even reflect projectiles. A survival mode called Hordes of Evil pits players against endless waves in arena settings.

A Year-Long Early Access Journey

Amid Evil's path to completion was deliberately spread across more than a year. After its public announcement on October 25, 2017, New Blood Interactive followed the early-access strategy it had employed with Dusk, launching the game on Steam Early Access on March 12, 2018. That initial build delivered the first three of seven episodes—Astral Equinox, Domain of the Sentinels, and The Sacred Path—alongside the Hordes of Evil survival mode. Subsequent episodes arrived at a steady cadence: The Solar Solstice in May 2018, The Forges in September 2018, The Arcane Expanse in February 2019, and The Void in June 2019. The arrival of that final episode marked the game's graduation from early access into a full release, which also brought quality-of-life updates to earlier content, including additional lore, expanded enemy variety, environmental refinements, and weapon balancing. On November 22, 2019, the first DLC, Ancient Alpha Builds, offered players five archived snapshots from various stages of the game's development, while the team simultaneously announced ray-tracing support via NVIDIA RTX.

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